Infatuation
by CowboySteel
Summary: Set during HBP, Draco/Harry fic. Draco struggles with the legacy his father has left him and the conflicting feelings he has for Harry. Harry, too, tries to come to terms with his festering obsession with Malfoy. Is it...love?


_Hello, this is my first EVER Harry Potter FF. It was written for a prompt by my friend for her birthday, she wanted something that might show some of the Draco/Harry subtext that she feels is ALL over HBP. I'm not a Draco/Harry shipper myself but we'll see how well it all goes really._

_(ALSO as a new member of the Potterfandom (but an everloving fan of the books) I've just discovered the musicals by Team Starkid. AMAZING. EVERYONE SHOULD SEE THEM. simply glorious)_

_PS None of the characters/places anything to do with HP is mine, I am only partaking in the bubbling fandom beneath :))_

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_**Infatuation**_

Draco sat staring at the cabinet, wringing his hands as he thought about the events that were about to happen. The events he would start. The events a death-eater would start.

The word Deatheater seemed to echo throughout the cluttered room even as he thought it. Everything was so much easier when he was 11. Voldemort was a story, a scary fable in which his dad would speak of volatile happiness when he wanted to relive his glory years. Of course, Draco never admitted he found his dad's tales scary. Lucius had never understood fear. That is, until last year when he had finally faced the wrath of the man he'd served for so many years. Draco shuddered to think of the way his father had run into the house, barking orders at Narcissa to pack up, his face lined with worry that Draco had never seen before. Draco had known even then that his father couldn't run away. And that's what made all this so much worse.

Draco wanted to run away from so many things. It felt like he was at a dead end and the only thing he could do was run, back to the world he had come from, back to the days where he was number one in a world of Crabbe's and Goyle's, back to the days he knew how he felt about Harry Potter.

You see, becoming a deatheater wasn't the only thing Draco feared. Something inside of him was stirring, coiling in his stomach and everytime he saw Harry, it just got worse. At first he thought it was just nerves, the fear of being caught. But he knew, deep down, that it was so much more. It wasn't until Crabbe and Goyle started to question him that he realised exactly what his body was telling him.

Draco had never known what exactly it was about this Potter boy. Everyone wanted a piece of him and his fame. Draco saw past all that. Beneath the fame there was a boy. A boy with startling green eyes...

Draco shook his head. It wasn't right. It wasn't right for Slytherin, a deatheater, to be...Draco gulped..._in love. _

But it was fine. Draco knew nothing would come of it. Harry hated him. Whenever Harry glanced his way, it was a look of cool disgust. Whereas Draco just saw a boy, Harry saw a monster.

Draco bowed his head low, unable to look at the open cabinet anymore, seeing not wood and glass but some sort of weak metaphor for his need for sexual completion, his need for Harry. Harry filtered through his mind all the time, his scruffy hair, his fair complexion, his entrancing eyes and the contempt they held for the one man that sought solace in them. Draco laughed bitterly to think of the Harry that had been following him these past few months, the Harry that had become obsessed with him. Draco had fooled himself to think that maybe this wasn't entirely because of his link to the Dark Lord, that maybe Harry felt the same intrigue Draco did. His fingers subconsciously brushed the scars as his heart felt the wounds sectumsempra had left, his heart feeling them more than his flesh ever did.

He had been with Myrtle again. Poor lonely Myrtle. Draco had scorned her, been horrible to her and now, he knew what it was like to be her. He was trapped, trapped between good and evil, trapped between love and hate. It wasn't even his fault Harry hated him. He was young, foolish and arrogant when he came to Hogwarts, he knew that now. His father had never prepared him for a world that was good and kind, Lucius had only seen hatred and glory at the depths of a grim and sneaky world. And so Draco had gone off to Hogwarts with a horrifying air of wizarding racism and when he saw Weasley and Potter, he immediately saw artificiality. Hadn't Lucius said that was what friendship was, really? A game?

He was wrong. He knew that. He only had to look at the two Gryffindors, together with the Granger girl to see how truly wrong his father was. And despite the fact that all of this, all of this deatheater business was to protect his family, Draco knew he could never forgive Lucius. Deep down, Draco knew it wasn't his father's fault, he was misunderstood and god knows Draco knew how that felt. His dad was heir to a lifetime of distrust and wrongdoing, it would only follow that he would parrot the same ignorance. But the fact remained that Lucius had set him up for a life Draco hated, where it wasn't allowed to find true love, and that true friendship would never exist. Crabbe and Goyle weren't friends, they were nothing to him. They were minions.

He wanted Harry to like him once more. See how brave he was. All of this was a facade, a mask hiding the true love inside. Draco had once heard it said that love was so close to hatred that often one mistook one to be the other. That was how he felt about Harry. He had rebelled against it for so long, he had forgotten exactly why. And now he had matured, he knew. He felt it. It chilled his bones and warmed his heart all at the same time. For Harry was all that Draco was supposed to be against and everything that he wanted to be.

He sighed and stood up. This had to end tonight. He had to stop being pathetic. He had to get a grip, rise above these _feelings_. They were nothing, inconsequential really when he thought of what would happen tonight. After tonight, there would be no more Hogwarts for him, there would be no more mooning over the Boy Who Lived. Dumbledore would die and Draco would be a deatheater. It had to end.

Light was coming up on the horizon as dawn broke, filtering through the dormitory and casting a strip of hazy light on Harry's bed. He glanced out of the window at the clear sky and bit his lip. He hadn't slept. Something inside of him was stirring the blood in his veins, something foreboding. Harry couldn't pinpoint it, but something was wrong. Ron and Hermione had been exchanging glances for weeks about Harry's newfound obsession with Malfoy, but it had never dawned on him until last night that it might be more. More than finding out what he was up to and more than stopping him becoming a fully-fledged deatheater.

Harry had convinced himself years ago that Malfoy was not to be trusted, that Malfoy was nothing to him but an emblem of what was wrong with the wizarding world. He had kept him at arm's length for so long, loathed him even that he didn't see what was creeping up behind him. Was it possible that now, that at this precise moment, Harry had _feelings _for Malfoy?

He wanted to laugh it off, to stop being ridiculous. Harry couldn't possibly like Malfoy, he hated him. Hadn't he proved that over his years at Hogwarts?

But there it was. The word "proved". What was it Harry had to prove exactly?

He bowed his head, drawing his knees to his chest. Everything in his life seemed so uncertain. He didn't know when Dumbledore would call upon him for help, if he would ever call upon him for help. He didn't even know if he was going to survive the summer with Voldemort on the loose. But now, on top of all this existential doubt, there was a burning inside of him that told him Draco might hold the answer, that Draco could be the link Harry had been missing.

Harry shook his head. "No," he thought, "No. This is not what it's about. I AM NOT IN LOVE WITH MALFOY" but even as he thought it, new seedlings of doubt sprung up in his mind. Maybe, after all this time, after all the trauma Harry had seen in his life, maybe now Harry could see the light in Draco and not just the dark, not just the deatheater. Harry had heard what Myrtle had said, and though mocking seemed to come naturally, he also felt something else stir in his heart. At the time, he had put it down to pity. He pitied Draco. He pitied the life he had been forced to live, the despicable father he had been forced to live with. But there again, was it really _just _pity?

Harry thought of the pale-faced boy who had, for so long, been his enemy, and he sighed. He was sure whatever he was up to was wrong, and that Harry would have to stop him, but right now, Harry was obsessed for a whole other reason.

He looked outside again, and thought of quidditch, the wind soaring as he flew through the air. It was freedom. Freedom from this uncertainty and freedom from this destructive infatuation that Harry simply could not condone. But even as he tried to distract himself by thinking of the sport he loved, the boy he could not forget swooped into his mind's eye.

It was true that there was more to Draco Malfoy than meets the eye, but Harry didn't know if he was ready to discover it. Everything was much more simple at the age of eleven, Harry had never began to think that this hatred might be attraction instead. The fact still remained that the pale-faced blonde boy he had been against was now becoming the centre of Harry's life, whether for good or bad. The sooner Harry could accept that, the better.


End file.
